


Déja Vu

by tlbattle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Complete, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Sass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-01-08 16:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tlbattle/pseuds/tlbattle
Summary: He's met her before, he'ssure of it.





	1. Chapter 1

_Part One_

He’s met her before.

He can’t quite place where, or when, or _how_ , but Cullen knows he’s crossed paths with the so-called Herald of Andraste, years ago. There’s something about her - he can’t quite place what - that nags at the back of his mind, a strange familiarity, like a dream he forgot in the morning.

Well, more like a nightmare.

“Four pair, stacked,” the Inquisitor says now, breaking him from the reverie. Her mouth is full of half-chewed biscuit and she slogs down another gulp of beer. The smugness in her voice sends prickles of irritation across Cullen’s skin, the infuriating woman couldn’t even _win_ a card game with poise.

He remembers her from _somewhere_ , from a different part of his life when he was a fresh recruit in the Order. But it’s part of a lyrium haze, memories he isn’t sure of anymore.

He stares down at his own hand. No matches.

_Shit._

“Varric, if you have the Angel of Death, so help me,” says Josephine, playful irritation in her lilting accent.

Varric offers a shrug but says nothing, sipping his own ale. Josephine fingers her cards carefully, pouting her lips and scrunching her face. As she hesitates and hovers between two cards, the Inquisitor slaps the table with her hand.

“ _Today_ , Josie!” the gruff woman says, a toothy smile aimed at the much more delicate ambassador.

“Oh _hush_ , you can wait,” Josie fires back, her grin just as wide. The two friends play rivals easily, their banter almost as real as Dorian’s and Bull’s. Josie discards a card from her hand, then gently pulls the top card from the face down deck. “ _Now_ you can go, Alhari.”

“Fiiiinally,” the Inquisitor - _Alhari Trevelyan, an Annoyance-Most-High_ \- says with fake relief. She swiftly removes three of her cards for the top three in the deck, decisively and with no hesitation. Cullen sniffs unconsciously - she does almost everything in this way, without much thought or sense of consequence. She nudges Cullen sitting nearby, shoving his elbow so hard it sends his tankard wobbling.

“Maker!” he yelps, surprised. The tankard shifts a few more times from side to side before settling once more. “ _Watch it_ , Inquisitor,” he growls through clenched teeth, rubbing his arm with his free hand.

She holds up her hands in a defenseless motion. “Excuse me, Pretty Boy, I thought you were playing the game,” she taunts lightly. She shrugs, as if to say - _guess not_.

He narrows his eyes at her, but then removes two cards from his hand and replaces it with two more from the deck. A pair of Daggers. Perhaps he can mozy his way to a victory this time -

And then Varric puts down the Angel of Death, followed by three Knights and an Angel.

“You cheater!” Josephine says with a laugh, throwing her cards down. Two Daggers and two Songs.

Cullen sighs, putting down his own hand: two Daggers, a Snake, and a Song.

The bark of a laugh comes from the Inquisitor then as she slides her cards onto the table.

Three Angels. One Knight.

“Pretty Boy, if you could see your face right now,” laughs Alhari. She mimics his open-mouthed stare, but hers is complete with crossed-eyes. She moves her face back into place with a snort. Collecting the small pile of gold in the center of the table, she chuckles again.

Varric smiles. “How about another round?”

**. . .**

He’s _so sure_ he knows her.

Then again, she’s a warrior, tall and powerful born from the Trevelyan clan, nearly four years older than he, and hailing from the north and running with a mercenary group until she fell out of the sky. Their paths couldn’t have crossed.

Could they?

Solas had told him of false memories, of how the mind recreates the past to protect against trauma.

If that’s the case - he _hopes_ he’s never met her before this.

He’s staring at her now, across the War Table, watching as she finishes eating _another_ biscuit taken from the kitchens. She swallows hard, but her mouth is still very much full of half-chewed, flaky bread.

Oh, _and_ she’s an absolute brute - he hadn’t spent much time with brutish women, past or present. There was no way he knew her.

“The Exalted Plains are next, then,” she says, muffled and matter-of-factly, stabbing the map with a letter-opener. It’s the fifth one she’s stolen in Skyhold to pierce the damn table with. Three of which were taken from Cullen’s own personal office.

The woman was a monster.

Cullen shakes his head, blond hair tussling with the motion. The Exalted Plains should not be next. The _Fallow Mire_ should be next.

But what does she know? A half-educated barbarian that was spat out of a glowing tear in the Fade, who was truly only there by chance. He wasn’t even sure if she knew how to read, so how could she even possibly understand the delicate nuances of war strategy? _Herald of Andraste, indeed._

The sudden cracking of her knuckles pulls Cullen from his frustrated thoughts and he recoils in his own seat. The pops echo in the stuffy room, another irritating habit of hers that makes him cringe. She pops her neck - her back - her hips - her shoulders -

 _Maker_ , give him strength.

She finally finishes, stretching her arms overhead. “Leliana, can we get a report on the Fallow Mire?” she asks the Spymaster, who also had been grimacing at the cracking joints.

 _Fallow Mire, finally_ , Cullen thinks with a silent click of the tongue. “Took long enough.”

It takes him a long, _long_ moment to realize he had said the last part of his thought aloud. The rest of his fellow advisors are staring at him - Cassandra practically setting him ablaze with her glare. Cullen’s cheeks flush a bright pink and he’s met with Alhari’s gaze - an intense moment made even more intense with her pale, light eyes. They were so light he could probably see straight through into her mind.

“Something to add, Commander?” she says with an eyebrow raised. It’s a threat, a warning, a _challenge_ \- but Cullen Rutherford, by the Maker, will _not_ be intimidated by this uncivilized woman.

“Well - “ he starts.

“Rhetorical,” she interrupts, moving a piece on the war table map. The wooden finger she slides to the Fallow Mire is representative of his personal troop of soldiers. “Thank you _so much_ for voicing your opinion on the Fallow Mire, Commander _Pretty Boy_. Since you deem this _such_ an important area of investigation, you wouldn’t mind spearheading the Inquisition forces there, would you?”

He stood defiantly, tired of her condescending tone and that _insufferable_ nickname. She straightened to her full height, right as his eye level, and waited. The rest of the war council held its breath.

As a Templar, Cullen had taken an oath to uphold the Chantry’s principles and denounce those who would see those guidelines crumble. He had promised himself to the Maker and the Holy Virtues. He had promised not to incite violence nor celebrate it.

But he was close to full-on _brawling_ with this woman.

He takes a breath.

“Of course, Inquisitor,” he says with as much grace as he can muster. “ _Would love to_.”

The last part is said through clenched teeth.

Alhari’s pale eyes glint in glory. “Excellent,” she responds, sweeping up a few other pieces on the map and settling them elsewhere. “Leliana, we’ll have your spies move to the Free Marches, instead.”

As she straightens from the table, Alhari calls an end to the meeting and walks purposely out of the room, her cloak billowing behind her, as if waving goodbye to Cullen. Or flipping him off.

“I can’t be the only one she annoys, can I?” he asks the rest of the advisors as the door shuts behind the Inquisitor. But Josephine and Leliana share a glance before Josephine smiles to him. Cassandra’s arms are crossed, but he can see the smirk on her usually stoic face, too. “What - what are you all _smiling_ at?”

“Nothing,” chirps Leliana, her quiet voice marred by a grin.

“We’ve just noticed your. . . _lingering_ _stares_ , Commander,” Josephine jumps in.

The blush can’t get across his neck faster as he feels his entire face burn in humiliation. “E-excuse me?” he sputters. The audacity! The ridiculousness of the implication! _The nerve!_

He attempts to rein in his indignation as he states, “I have no warm feelings towards that woman, _whatsoever_.”

Now it’s Cassandra who barks an uncontrollable laugh. “Commander,” she starts, the cold, accented voice slicing through the air with authority. “Your infatuation is very obvious. But as long as it does not interfere with the Inquisition, we see no problem with your crush.”

“My _crush?!_ ” Cullen nearly shouts, restraining himself at the last moment. The three women are amused, he can see it in their faces - Leliana hides a smile behind a small hand, while Josephine and Cassandra are staring at him with almost smug, polite grins.

Lunatics!

He throws his hands into the air. “You are _all_ out of your respective minds.”

Stomping to the door with his heavy boots clattering against the wooden floors, he hopes he scuffs up at least a few floorboards in the Inquisitor's _precious damn war room._

“Of course we are, Commander,” Josephine’s lilting voice calls after him.


	2. Chapter 2

_Part Two_

He’s _got_ to know her.

He pays off a few of Leliana’s spies to dig up dirt on the Trevelyan, under the guise of finding unsavory details before their political enemies and the Chantry can use it against the Inquisition. Considering the Inquisitor's bandit past and most likely unlawful journeys throughout Thedas, he expects there to be a pile or two of reports on his desk by the time he returns.

Cullen trudges through the Fallow Mire, setting up the base camp and ordering a survey of the swampland. It is cold. And dreary. And _constantly_ raining.

And honestly, the experience only stokes the fire he’s burning for Trevelyan - he can’t _wait_ to hear what Leliana’s nightingales have uncovered in the intolerable woman’s past. He’s practically giddy on the journey back thinking about it.

He returns to Skyhold with zero fanfare, mud still caked onto his boots and armor. He walks through the courtyard and up the battlement staircase, exhausted. He pauses, catching sight of someone chatting with a faceless spy atop one of the nearby towers. He can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but he recognizes the mane of dark hair.

He narrows his eyes. _Trevelyan._

She turns and heads towards Cullen. As she passes him, she doesn’t offer any greeting or semblance of acknowledgement.

But he could’ve sworn she _smirked_.

The next day, he’s hovering over his desk when one of Leliana’s agents finally arrive, but with a single sheet of paper in his hand instead of a pile of reports. The spy sputters, turning red with embarrassment as he hands Cullen the sheaf of parchment.

“I - I’m sorry, ser, she - she a - _cornered_ me,” the spy says hastily, wringing his hands. “She’s even _taller_ than people say she is, ser - “

A flash of the Inquisitor speaking with the spy yesterday crosses his mind as realization dawns on him. _That devil woman!_

Cullen gazes down at the piece of paper. The words burn into his eyes and he tears it up after a moment of blind rage.

He rushes past the spy, unconsciously growling and muttering to himself in anger. He practically sprints down the battlements, skipping steps as he goes.

How dare she!

He finds her in the kitchens - _predictably_ \- and slams a fist onto the table she’s perched on.

“‘ _Even a Marbari knows to not stick its nose where it hurts?’”_ he shouts her own words back at her. He tosses the pieces of the parchment paper at her and they flutter into the air helplessly. One of the cooks drops a plate, jumping from his roar. It shatters onto the stone floor, mirroring Cullen’s fury.

“Is that supposed to be a threat, _Inquisitor?_ ”

He spits her title; it tastes like ash in his mouth.

She hasn’t reacted. The Inquisitor chews the apple she had been eating, taking her time to swallow the piece in her mouth before leveling him with that harsh, pale gaze. “It is a _fact_ , Commander,” she replies coolly.

She slips off the table, stepping towards him. She radiates heat; he can feel the wisps of it against his own face. He smells the traces of sword oil on her skin - he’s so close he can see the flecks of gold in her eyes.

But stepping backwards would mean conceding, and former Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, _current Commander of the Inquisition Forces_ , will _not_ concede.

She bites into her apple again, cocking her head to one side as if to regard him as a curiosity rather than a man. “You’ve been thinking of me,” she states, matter-of-fact and stark. He catches the double meaning in her words and thinks of Leliana and Josephine and Cassandra snickering in the war room.

His cheeks flush on their own accord.

“Don’t let little old _me_ preoccupy your time, Commander,” she continues sarcastically, taking another bite of her apple. “You have more important things to worry about.”

The tall woman side steps him and leaves the Commander with the startled kitchen staff.

“C-Commander, did - did you want - “ the head cook says, but is silenced by Cullen’s fuming glare. He lets loose an undignified shout before following her out of the kitchens.

“I’m not done speaking with you!” he says, propelling himself down the steps to catch up with the Inquisitor. She’s halfway down the staircase, in full view of the Skyhold refugees and their lingering allies. He overtakes her with a few strides and grasps her elbow. She looks down at his hand for a moment before breaking the grasp and hooking her arm through his in a swift motion, pulling him tightly into her.

Her grip is like an iron vice - he might as well be caught in a bear trap.

“Ach - “ he yelps, but she steadies him.

“Keep it together, Commander,” she whispers harshly. “I don’t need our people demoralized because our Commander and Inquisitor can’t _play nice_.”

“Can you loosen your hold there just a bit - “

“ _Talk_ ,” she growls. She puts on a smile then, laughs as if he made a joke. Cullen gapes at her - she’s gone absolutely _mad_.

They walk with one another for a time, down the staircase and into the training yard. She seems to be leading them back to the battlements, aiming to drop him off at his office and leave him there.

“Why do you want to know about my past,” she hisses; it is not a question, but more an invitation for him to say the right thing. He scans the recruits passing by, nods at them to continue their respective errands.

“Because the Inquisition should know about your past crimes before anyone else does,” he responds automatically, the cover story serving him well. He almost believes it himself. “Josephine is a master of providing the padding necessary for the politicians, but we need to know every raid you’ve ever been on, just in case.”

“‘We,’ or _‘you'_?” she demands with a wicked grin. It is not sincere. “You’ve been hounding me since I fell out of the Breach, attempting to find any sort of fault. Is it not enough that I am willing to make the decisions no one else can?” She tugs him up the stairs.

“Is it not enough that I am _still_ here, reading _your_ reports, listening to _your_ counsel, trying to find any possible advantage to ensure _our_ victory against Corypheus?”  Honestly, he’s never heard her say anything eloquently before; he’s more stunned by her full statements than by anything else.  

“To me, it seems you are preoccupying your time with something that most deservedly does _not_ need your attention.”

They had arrived at his office. She releases his arm and he shakes feeling back into it. “Stay out of my past, Commander,” she warns, transparent eyes shining with ferocity. “You and I are partners in something much bigger than both of us. Perhaps you should start acting like it.”

She begins to descend the staircase, her boots echoing off the stone.

Cullen stands in the doorway of his office for a long while, feeling much guiltier than he’d care to admit.

. . .

Maybe he _wants_ to know her.

Cullen sits in his office alone, attempting to organize the many reports that had found their way onto his desk. He shuffles the papers in his hand, but puts them down with a huff. He can’t stop the Inquisitor’s questions from bouncing around his mind - what _did_ he have against her?

Well, for one, she’s an absolute barbarian. Most people think she had been raised by the Avvar, then absolutely are absolutely _shocked_ when they learn of her noble birth, Cullen counting among them. She’s tactless, and sometimes he thinks she goes out of her way to be impolite.

Two - she’s careless and reckless, taking gambles that she really _shouldn’t_.

She lives by a high risk, high reward model and perhaps _that’s_ what irks him.

Three - she’s personally just _annoying_. Popping her joints, chewing with her mouth open, the indifference of her attitude when there are _serious matters_ to discuss. Not to mention his letter openers.

And - and -

He sighs.

He’s no noble, and _he_ had done things - truly horrific and barbaric things - in his youth. His manners could have used some polishing and there were plenty of times he stuck his boot in his mouth.

The Inquisitor, he reasons, is at least attempting to do the right thing, make the right decisions, and keep everyone alive at the same time. She’s trying.

He searches his memory for something else to justify his attitude, something perhaps she said offhandedly, something that puts him into the spiraling bad mood he seems to always be in when she’s around. But he finds what he always finds: that small voice nagging, saying he _knows_ her, but not in a friendly way, not in a way he would call her an ally.

Right?

“Ugh,” he says aloud, standing from his desk.

He seemed to be chasing the Inquisitor more and more these days.

He expects to find her in the tavern - but she isn’t there. Bull suggests checking the throne, or maybe her chambers and Cullen nods, heading back to the exit. “Alhari under the Commander’s skin again?” asks Dorian to no one in particular, glancing up from his book and pint.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more like Alhari's under the Commander, _period_ ,” supplies Sera from her perch. She snorts as Cullen glares at her.

He rolls his eyes so hard they might fall out his head, but then he’s gone again, slamming the tavern door behind him. The training grounds are deserted too and he’s about to give up when he turns around and runs straight into her.

“Hey - !” Alhari snips as he reactively steadies her by the shoulders. _“Watch it,_ Pretty Boy.”

She brushes his hands off her and in that moment, Cullen thinks she could have won against Cassandra in a Biggest Scowl contest.

“I need to speak with you,” he says hurriedly, fast before he can hesitate and return to his silent, safe room.

“Alright,” Alhari insists, throwing a hand haphazardly in the air. “What do you want?”

“Erm - “ he sputters, glancing around. Troops are staring at them, distracted from their ongoing card game. Refugees gape at the Inquisitor, whispering amongst one another. “Not here. Battlements?”

Alhari closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “You do _love_ the battlements, don’t you. Fine,” she relents. He pulls her around, towards the large stone staircase. “But you have literally two minutes when we get there.”

It is incredibly windy at the top, but Cullen makes a conscious decision to not let the cold bother him. Alhari, on the other hand, crosses her arms over the light armor she’s wearing and visibly shivers. _“You have one minute now,”_ she says, teeth chattering.

“I wanted to apologize,” he blurts out - well, so much for decorum at this point. “It was wrong of me to pry, and wrong of me to assume the worst of you.” He pauses. Her teeth chatter.

“I - “ he continues, his voice softer. “You are the Inquisitor and I’ve pledged myself to the Inquisition.”

Another pause. This time, she shifts her feet, rubbing her arms as if to say - _And?_

“Oh - Maker - come here,” he says, annoyed, unhitching his cloak and wrapping it around her shoulders. She stiffens as he clips it securely, his fingers brushing her collarbone.

He notices her hesitation to touch the heavy material, but then she wraps it closer around her torso.

Oh, it is _so_ much colder without his cloak, but he sets his jaw and lets the wind cut through his armor. At least her teeth have stopped chattering.

He stares her directly into those almost otherworldly eyes, her pale gaze colder than all of the Frostback Mountains’ peaks combined. He shivers and isn’t sure it’s just from the freezing wind.

“Listen, I’m sorry, Alhari,” he levels. Her name is foreign in his mouth and suddenly his tongue feels too thick. “I’m sorry - I - I - haven’t - erm - “

She holds up a hand to stop his stuttering. “It’s _alright_ ,” she finally responds and he heaves a sigh of relief he hadn’t noticed was lodged in his chest. She leans against the battlement stonework, looking down onto the camps below. Her scowl is gone. He notices her face has softened into something akin to sadness, but less sorrowful - resignation? 

He follows her gaze.

He watches the refugees huddle against one another, whispering of home, of the Inquisitor, of how she’ll fix the world; he watches the healers attempt to fix bleeding gashes and burns and wounds, with determination and purpose in their movements; he watches the soldiers sharpening their weapons and writing letters to their loved ones and joking with one another to bolster the spirit when the body was sore and aching.

“I think we’re all just trying to do our best,” she says quietly. She nudges him, the sharp elbow hitting him in the side. “You and I included.”

He can’t argue with that.

“I’m sorry, too, Cullen,” she says softly, so soft he almost doesn’t hear her. She offers him a startling small smile - genuine and well-meaning - before handing him his cloak and descending the staircase.

Did - did she just call him by his real name?


	3. Chapter 3

_Part Three_

He gets to know her.

After their conversation atop the battlements, she had treated him with what one would call _indifferent tolerance._ She had not singled him out in the war room, nodded at him politely in passing, and even stopped using that irritating _Pretty Boy_ nickname.

Yet somehow, the indifference bothers him more than outright hatred.

Cullen watches his soldiers run through drills in the training courtyard, arms crossed and mind wandering. For the past few days, Alhari had gone out of her way to avoid him, it seemed: whenever he would enter a room, she would exit; whenever he caught her eye, she would look away immediately.

His mouth is drawn tight, irritation bristling against the inside of his chest.

The sudden realization of _why_ her indifference annoys him so much more comes tumbling out of the back of his mind, the part of him that still holds the firm belief they’ve met before. Maker, he wants her to _like_ him.

A recruit falls to the ground, knocked back by another soldier and Cullen knows _exactly_ how that feels.

He wants her to like him! Maker! Not only respect and tolerate him, but downright consider him a _friend!_

He must be going mad.

. . .

Still - once Cullen has made up his mind, he works out the strategies on how to accomplish this impossible task of befriending the Inquisitor.

He starts slow.

He sits with her at the mid-morning meal. She doesn’t shift away, but continues eating and flipping through Scout Harding’s latest correspondences as if he hadn’t set his plate next to hers. They eat in silence and when she is finished, Alhari stands without preamble, leaving him alone, without a second glance.

This continues for a few months with no words exchanged during their little breakfast ritual.

Even if the Inquisitor doesn’t notice him, all of Skyhold does, and soon there is always a space vacant next to Alhari, no one else daring to sit in the Commander’s claimed seat.

It isn’t a complete disaster - so he takes it a step further.

Cullen goes out of his way to deliver reports to her himself.

He knocks on the Inquisitor’s door, the pile of papers precariously cradled in his arm. Alhari swings the door open with the force of a tornado, but pauses when she realizes it’s just him. Her eyes sweep from Cullen to the stack of papers, then back to Cullen.

She leaves the door open for him as she walks back into her chambers. “What do you want, Commander,” she says, her voice flat.

“Excuse the interruption, Inquisitor,” he states in response, crossing into the room and closing the door with a soft _click_ behind him.

Alhari doesn’t dismiss him right away, but he cautiously follows her to the corner desk, gingerly placing the reports down onto the table. “Fallow Mire, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves - and correspondence from your cousin, your two sisters, and your uncle in Ostwick,” he explains, shuffling through the folders one by one. “They send letters almost everyday.”

 _Like Rosalie,_ he thinks, almost smiling at the thought of his sister. If only Rosalie could see him now, trying to gain the favor of this madwoman.

He watches as Alhari picks up the lute near her chair and strums it absentmindedly with her callused fingers. Settling down into a plush sitting pouf nearby, she drapes her long legs out in front of her. She regards him for a long while, head cocked and eyebrows scrunched into a perplexed and intrigued kind of look - or perhaps that’s Cullen’s hope. Better than the scowl, truly.

She begins to pluck a few notes, floating easily into an old song he knows - _Once We Were._

“Continue,” she says quietly, the song wrapping around the pair. He takes a breath and begins to brief her.

. . .

And finally, Cullen pushes ever further into this one-sided affair - honestly, this last effort might be the hardest for him - he attempts to listen carefully when she presents another tactic he’s not sure about in the war room.

She looks at him when she’s speaking and he knows that she’s searching his countenance for any hint of annoyance or disapproval.

But he grits his teeth and nods at the points that make sense, politely asks her level questions when something doesn’t. At every meeting, he leans forward to see where she’s pointing better, takes a few notes when Alhari mentions something more than once. He learns quickly how she works, how the pieces fit together, how she keeps a much, _much_ larger picture in mind when conferring with the war council.  

While he learns her strategies, he learns _her_. It is a game of side glances and mutterings, offhanded comments and minuscule gestures.

By now, he assumes that she’s on to him, the woman much more clever than he previously thought; it wouldn’t be unusual if she knew his motives for paying more attention.

She watches him like a hawk, memorizing every detail, every gesture, every word he utters. Her countenance, as usual, is like stonework: an unmoving fortress. Her eyes are hard like clear marble.

And through it all, he attempts to find the edges of her he can grasp, the sliver of common ground he can find to stand on with her. But Cullen finds that Alhari Trevelyan is a more complicated puzzle than he first thought - she’s absolutely confounding.

. . .

He catches glimpses of Alhari behind the cool mask of detachment she now wears for him and is confused even more - for someone who grew up with nobility, she’s hardly ladylike, pretend or otherwise.

For someone who is semi-worshipped as the Herald of Andraste, she actually laughed in his face when he asked if she believed in the Maker.

For someone who is attempting to keep everyone else alive, she disregards the dangers she places herself in, stomping headlong into foes and enemies with her broadsword.

For as much pessimism she harbors for her fellow man, she bleeds for the war-torn families and citizens of Thedas.

She holds the burden of hundreds of thousands of people on her shoulders and does not complain, not even once. She carries the hopes and fears and fire and fury of Thedas on her back, pushes the boundaries of this war further into their favor.

As always, there is the familiarity Cullen feels whenever he is near her. It’s almost as if he’s comfortable with her, a kinship he can’t quite name.

He lets his leg rest against hers at breakfast and once she adjusted to have her thigh flush against his. He sinks into the sitting pouf sometimes when she moves her lute playing to her desk instead. He lingers after war meetings and walks her back to her chambers, speaking in low tones.

He feels the fortress walls of Alhari lowering and the kinship is more than _indifferent tolerance_ now.

And then he dreamt about her, once. Or perhaps the better phrasing would be that she was _in_ one of his dreams.

It had begun the same, as all of his nightmares do - fire and screams, bloated bodies and demons rampaging through the sad streets of Kirkwall. He is bleeding and his sword is heavy. He needs to help, _must_ help -

Then it shifted - he was standing in line with his brother and sister, two headstones before them. His mother and father, empty graves as they could not recover their bodies from their hometown streets. The demons destroyed everything in their path, leaving nothing for families to bury in their wake.

His dream shifted again -

And then Alhari was there.

She appeared only for a few moments, a distant figure on a distant hill in a distant memory.

His chest hurt with rage.

Alhari stood overlooking his parents’ memorial service, tear-streaked as if she had known them. In this dream, Cullen had wanted to shout at her, a dangerous mix of anger and sorrow and betrayal sinking further and further into his heart - how could she cry for _his_ mother and father, as if _she_ had the _right_.

How _dare_ she try to feign the hurt and loss he had felt then and now, the void his parents left in his heart.

How _could_ she -  

He woke, panting into the darkness, sweat soaking his sheets.


	4. Chapter 4

_Part Four_

He knew her in the dream. 

But it was a dream, of course. 

Or a nightmare, one of the many to which he’s become accustomed. But the memory of her tear-streaked face, vulnerable against the darkness, haunts his waking hours. The ghost of rage and anger and fury still sticks to his ribs, staining him inside.

But it was only a dream, wasn’t it?

Cullen concentrates on chewing the food in front of him, barely registering the taste. Alhari Trevelyan in no way knew his parents, has no way of knowing _any_ of his family, really. She is from the Free Marches, not Ferelden; he has seen the reports of her roaming around Thedas during the Fifth Blight, when his mother and father were lost to him. She was not - _could not_ \- have been at their service -

A _clang_ nearby jolts Cullen back from his private thoughts as a plate filled with a bit of breakfast is set down onto the table next to his. Alhari lowers herself into her seat aside him, shoving him a bit with her thigh to move him a tad. “Scoot over, will you?” she says aloud.

Cullen’s floored.

It takes him a moment to shift, moving an inch or two further down the bench, and it takes him a minute longer to continue eating, attempting to seem unconcerned at this startling development.

Alhari carries on as usual, reading the reports Leliana had given her the night before, and scarfing down a biscuit. “And how is your morning, Cullen?” she asks casually, glancing up from her reading.

He gapes at her. “W-What?” he asks, feeling particularly dumb.

A small smirk breaks onto her face and she scoops an egg into her mouth. “Your morning,” she repeats, chewing. “How goes it?”

“It’s . . . good?” he responds. Maker, he sounds half his age.

“Good.”

She smiles, looking back down to her meal and papers.  

Every morning afterward, _she_ slides in next to _him._

The small victory is dizzying and hard-won. Cullen almost _gloats_ out loud, but then remembers Cassandra’s bark of a laugh and keeps it to himself. It’s a private triumph and he unconsciously smiles each time her thigh presses against his, signaling for him to scoot over.

Then - this almost gave Cullen a heart attack - a few weeks later, _she_ seeks _him_ out to get the latest updates on enemy movement and soldier morale. She even _knocks_ on his door instead of barging in, and he stutters a hello before she sweeps into the room, cloak and mane billowing behind.

She flops onto his chair and kicks up her dirty boots onto his desk. “What’s the latest on our scouts?”

He smirks and as nonchalantly as he can, summarizes the field reports for her.

. . .

 

And _then_ , to cap this entire fiasco off, exactly one month later after _that_ , she asks him to stay after a war meeting has been adjourned.

Cullen hesitates, but attempts to stay aloof, uttering a calm, “Of course, Inquisitor.”

He catches Josephine’s eye while she closes the door behind her and she raises her eyebrows at him suggestively. Cassandra behind her actually _winks_.

He scowls at them both.

Turning back to the Inquisitor, however, he can feel the familiar heat of blushing blossoming underneath his armor and up his neck.

“What do you need of me, Inquisitor?” he asks, clearing his throat. Does he sound nervous? He definitely _isn’t_ nervous.

She catches his eye so fiercely with her near translucent ones that he flinches in reaction. But there’s something else there, hidden underneath the shining pools of light amber - humor?

She reaches underneath the war table and pulls out a bottle of dark liquid, then two glasses. Her face moves easily into a half-grin, a mischievous almost-smile gracing her lips.

. . .

This isn’t what Cullen thought when Alhari prodded him to join her for a drink.

Well, she doesn’t exactly lead them through the courtyard and into the warm, crowded cabin-turned-pub.

Alhari carries the bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other, and he follows her through the back hallways of the Great Hall, down corridors he didn’t even know existed.

“How did you find all this?” he asks quietly, his whisper bouncing off the walls and echoing back to the pair.

“There’s a lot of Skyhold to find when you aren’t sleeping,” she responds. Alhari shoves a door open with her shoulder and suddenly they are outdoors, the cold wind whipping against the pair. She leads him up a steep staircase missing a few steps, but she’s agile and clearly has been up this dangerous path before - she practically hops up without the use of her hands and is waiting at the top for him in a few precarious seconds.

When Cullen finally reaches her, forehead slick with sweat, she nods her head to narrow rampart and he squeezes through, barely fitting his bulk in the slight opening.

“Suck it in, Commander,” teases Alhari behind him and when months ago he would have scowled, he manages to laugh.

A few more steps and they emerge onto a stone balcony with a small parapet separating them from the Frostbacks.

He hasn’t been up this high before and as the sun shines against the mountain peaks, it casts a brilliant glowing light onto everything. He breathes deeply, the air thin but clear. He’ll blame this on the light-headedness later, but right now he chuckles underneath his breath. He can’t hear the camps anymore; just the wind and the shuffling of the woman nearby.

Alhari is then beside him and she rips the cork off the bottle with her teeth. Generously pouring the liquid into one cup, then the other, she hands a drink to him.

“C’mon,” she nudges, settling herself on the parapet and letting her legs dangle off the side. A cold sweat breaks out along his spine - she is _dangerously_ close to the edge - but he gulps and steels himself before sitting down next to her.

 _Don’t look down_ , he warns himself.

He doesn’t need to - he looks out among the Frostbacks, almost equal in height. He feels magnificent, a strange feather-like air in his lungs. They’re quiet for a while as they sip their respective drinks, watching the glittering orange peaks fade into a cerulean blue, then into navy.

The liquor is sweet and spicy and smokey, sending a pleasant tingling warmth down his throat. When Alhari smiles at him, her teeth are stained a shade of purple and he runs an unconscious tongue against his own.

“This is my favorite part,” she whispers to him, pointing skywards. She lays down, stretching her back onto the stone and she pokes him in the ribs. “Get prone! You’re going to miss it.”

Her long legs still dangle off the ledge and so do his, but he _does_ feel more comfortable as he lies down next to her, a bit more grounded. He settles in and accidentally touches her arm with his; he snaps it back as if he was electrocuted.

“I won’t bite, Cullen,” she says with an easy laugh. He feels a smile on his face and his cheeks hurt from the effort of the muscles working again.

He relaxes, sighs, and gazes up at the night.

The twilight sky is brilliant.

It is green and navy and purple and black, all melding before the pair. The moons are out, giant and pale against the backdrop. Pinpricks of white stars pierce the dark, then a streak of pale yellow flashes across the night, skipping like an ember over a black blanket.

A few of the falling star’s companions follow, then a brief period of many more. He watches them in quiet awe, a gentle smile finding its way onto his face.

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” says Alhari in a low voice. The ghost of a laugh follows.

He can’t remember the last time he’s felt so genuinely _amazed_.

“I - “ he starts. He has a thousand things to say to her at this moment, perhaps a thousand-and-one.

But he settles on, “Yes, it truly is.”

Cullen sighs and sips and stares up at the sky, and doesn't notice the contented smile gracing Alhari's face in the moonlight.


	5. Chapter 5

_Part Five_

He knows her like he knows himself.

She stretches when she’s stressed (which is often). Her left eye twitches when she’s exhausted (which is also, unfortunately, often).

She picks at her fingernails when she doesn’t want to talk about something, and chews her bottom lip when she’s concentrating hard on something else. The hue of her eyes shifts from light to dark when she’s annoyed, and then back again when she’s overjoyed.

She has at _least_ fourteen different smiles and only two of them are semi-friendly. And lastly, she looks to her left when she’s lying and right into his eyes when she’s telling the truth.

. . .

Which is how Cullen knows that Alhari’s _bluffing_.

“You’re taking too long again, Josie,” says Alhari with an exaggerated sigh. She feigns falling asleep as the proper ambassador raises one manicured eyebrow. A fake snore escapes the Inquisitor.

“I’ll take as long as I’d like,” Josephine returns, switching only one card out of her hand. The ambassador turns to the Commander on her right. “Your turn, Cullen.”

“Ach, finally,” Alhari mutters, fluttering her eyes open with an exaggerated motion and settling her gaze on the Commander. Her irises are a paler hue - mischievous and joking. “Let’s _go_ , Pretty Boy. Some of us have a lot of celebrating to do, so hurry up.”

She smiles down at her cards, but then there it is - the glance to her left, the momentary bluff.

She’s in a good mood. Shame he’ll have to spoil that.

He stares down at his cards - two pair (Angels and Knights) _and_ the Angel of Death; luckiest he’s been in a while.

“I think I’m all set, actually,” the Commander says with a wry smile.

Alhari narrows her eyes but her grin doesn’t leave. “Oh? How _quick_ ,” she says, eyeing him carefully. “So confident today, hmm?”

He takes a sip of his ale and wipes the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. He shrugs, smirking.

It could have been a minute or several hours, but Alhari regards him with such a critical eye, he swears she’s almost trying to _sniff_ out his deceit. “Alright then, how - “

“Oh, actually,” he interrupts, acting as if he had just remembered they were playing a game of Wicked Grace. “I _do_ have something.”

Alhari’s eyes are so narrow now that he’s not sure if they’re even still open. But it doesn’t matter - he laughs as he plants the Angel of Death into the center of the table.

It’s the first time he’s ever seen her truly shocked - eyes wide, mouth agape, and then she breaks out into her cackle, that infectious and good-natured laugh - and something flutters in his stomach, an excitement that leaves him a little more breathless than he was a minute earlier.

“You sneaky _bastard!_ ” laughs Alhari, tossing her cards across the table at him.

No pairs.

Cullen’s face burns with self-satisfaction; she _was_ bluffing. She flicks a light kick at his boots underneath the table and he locks eyes with her.

She’s smiling at him, earnest and full and _happy_ , and his breath hitches. He hastily looks back down to his cards with his cheeks on fire, clearing his throat.

Maker, had she always looked like that? Had she always been so. . . _so_. . . ? He can’t really find the words for how brilliant she looks right now.

Varric’s titter draws Cullen back to the present moment. “Honestly, Curls,” the dwarf says with a chuckle. “I was convinced you didn’t actually know how to play.”

. . .

She’s easy to read when he knows what he’s looking for.

If Alhari lets her hand rest a little too long on the pommel of her broadsword, she’s ready to pull it from the scabbard. If she closes the door to her chambers, then pauses with her hand on the knob, she’s wondering if she has forgotten something (it’s usually her boots).

When she takes dinner in the war room, chances are that she’ll sleep the whole night in there, too.

He finds her once, head resting on the table littered with figurines and drool pooling onto a few papers.

Her face is vulnerable and incredibly haunting, just like his dream. Open and striking, just like at that game of Wicked Grace a few weeks ago.

Cullen gulps.

“Inquisitor?” he ventures, whispering as he comes to her side. He swallows again, feeling a knot in his throat. She doesn’t wake, but groans and sighs before continuing to gently snore. “Alhari? Al?”

She blearily blinks awake, sleep still encompassing her features. “What?” she says, her voice like blades on gravel.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he mutters, pulling the cloak from his shoulders and wrapping it around her smaller frame. She sits up and then stands and then stumbles - he catches her in his arms, steadying her against him. She’s half-awake, half-unconscious, leaning into his torso.

Cullen hesitates with her in his arms, the Trevelyan hurricane suddenly placid. She mutters something into his chest, but it’s too muffled for him to hear.

He very well can’t leave her here, but she’s too exhausted to walk -

 _Oh, Maker_ , he sighs, resigned.

In one swift motion, he’s bent his knees and hoisted the rest of Alhari into his arms. She’s surprisingly not as heavy as he thought she’d be for a raging inferno of brutal warrior prowess.

Her bulky frame is still a bit awkward to hold, but he doesn’t mind.

Her long hair cascades over his arm, swirling about her face and it takes a moment to make sure it won’t get caught on his armor.

Alhari’s head lolls to his shoulder and there’s that strange fluttering in his stomach again, not quite admiration but not unwelcome. “You smell like campfire,” she mumbles into him, her eyes still closed.

He rumbles in a low chuckle. “Do I?”

“Yeah. . . like home.”

He isn’t expecting a response, especially _that one_ , from someone who won’t remember this conversation in the morning but suddenly his heart aches, as if someone grasped it from inside his ribs.

It hurts, but somehow doesn’t - it’s a dull, uncomfortable pang of _something_.

But then her hand touches the breastplate he’s still wearing and it’s as if a shock sears through him, from chest to back. The _something_ explodes inside of his stomach, as if her fingers had dislodged a hidden fountain in his lungs.

He forces his legs to move, to carry her through Josephine’s office (thankfully vacant) and into the Great Hall (also thankfully vacant).

Tapping the Inquisitor’s door open with his foot, Cullen carefully climbs the stairs into her chambers, lightly stepping on the stonework in order to not jostle the slumbering woman.

Thank the _Maker_ , he finally lowers her onto the bed and sits on the edge, rearranging the furs around her. She unconsciously pulls the cloak tighter around her while he works, muttering another broken sentence into his feathered pauldron.

He smiles down at her, laughing at the insanity that only a few months ago she had been a stranger, near social _enemy_.

Without thinking, he presses his lips softly against her forehead, planting a small kiss against her brow.

Alhari grunts, rolling into the familiar sheets, triggering an icy panic in Cullen.

But she only continues to gently snore, fast asleep.

He breathes a sigh of relief and makes his way back down the stairs as quietly as he can.

“G’night, Al,” he whispers, closing the door behind him.

. . .

If Cullen doesn’t lock his office door, there is a ninety-percent chance Alhari will be rummaging through his desk when he enters.

He’s caught her a few times, sneaky hands in unlocked drawers, fingers flipping through reports that even _he_ hadn’t sifted through yet.

This instance is part of the other ten-percent of his forgetting to lock the door - Alhari is nowhere in sight. He raises an eyebrow, still suspicious. She could, _of course,_ have just escaped.

Moving to his desk, Cullen is surprised to find a small bottle weighing down a folded piece of parchment. He glances around the room, making sure he’s alone. He even looks up, checking to see Alhari isn’t watching him from his own sleeping quarters with a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

But he really is alone.

He gingerly picks the bottle up, the dark liquid inside sloshing with the movement. Unstopping the flagon, he sniffs - smoke and spice and stars. It took him two days to get the purple off his teeth.

Smiling and intrigued, he plucks the parchment from his desk and unfolds the paper. Alhari’s dark scrawl meets his eyes -

**_Off to Redcliffe - Be back soon._ **

Maker, her hand really digs the quill into the paper, doesn’t it? He makes a mental note to have more inkwells sent to the Inquisitor’s chambers. Who knows how many she goes through simply writing correspondence.

He almost folds the paper away after reading the message, but notices there’s a postscript at the bottom, written in the same heavy letters:

**_PS: Save me some!_ **


	6. Chapter 6

_ Part Six _

He knows when she returns to Skyhold.

Cullen ordered three of his most trusted men to tell him immediately when she was spotted in the mountain paths. He knew something went awry in the Fade from her last correspondence, something that she refused to explicitly state in the letters sent to him. Instead of the usual lengthy and wordy letters she sent over the weeks, the last message had been simply a repeat of the first note on his desk.

**Be back soon** .

Something happened in that plane, a tragic and horrid and terrible event. Stitching the facts together from various reports his troops delivered, Cullen grasped the gist of what Alhari experienced -

The party delved into the other realm, a member lost to the plane - a sacrifice to return Alhari to the Inquisition’s fight against a mortal’s quest for godhood.

To return her to him.

. . .

She comes back with zero fanfare.

No, not really.

Refugees and other villagers stare at her when she passes through the main gates, stare still when she slowly climbs the stairs to the main hall. A Tevinter mage - Dorian, he’s called - and Cassandra shoo them away, Solas slipping from the public eye as quietly as a whisper.

Alhari does not stare back, her eyes carefully poised to the ground beneath her. Her arms are heavy, her entire presence resigned and exhausted.

Cullen watches her retreating figure, her silence deafening. She disappears behind heavy doors.

He is beside himself.

Half of him wishes to rush up the staircase, burst into her chambers and demand she tell him everything; wishes to wrap her in furs and his cloak and his arms; wishes to be the person she can confide in, the one to tell her everything is alright, nothing has changed, nothing will change -

The other half of him roots him to the spot.

. . .

Cullen gives her time to call for him.

He paces in his quarters and scribbles reports and pours over war tactics covered in dusty old tomes. He’s familiar with distracting himself from uncomfortable thoughts, but this time, there is no lyrium to combat the darkness.

He oversees the troops’ training exercises with glazed over eyes and wanders the hidden corridors in a mindless fog, letting his fingertips trace the cold stone wall.

He even traverses the crumbling staircase up to the tallest rampart, but finds it empty. She hasn’t left again, he knows that much; he has ordered his men to keep an eye on her movements. 

Alhari meets with Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine privately in her chambers and he can’t help but feel his exclusion like a spear through the shoulder.

Why hasn’t she called for him? Where is the barbarian? The hurricane? The biscuit-eating, letter-opener-thief?

Alhari, where are you?

. . .

Three weeks and two days later, she calls for him.

Well, she doesn’t exactly call for him, but that doesn’t stop Cullen from finally gathering the courage to knock on her chamber door. He waits until it is late in the evening and marches through the Hall with dignified strides, masking the boulder of worry currently sitting in his stomach.

Every morning for the past almost-month, he hoped she’d slide next to him at the morning meal, tell him to move over, and proceed to pick at his eggs when he wasn’t looking. And every afternoon he hoped she’d cross his path in the courtyard, tease him with another annoying nickname she no doubt thought of when traveling on the road.

But he hasn't even seen her walking about the grounds. 

Still, he’s waited as patiently as possible, trying to keep faith that she would call when she needed him. He's watched Cassandra and Leliana float in and out of her quarters, grim frowns plastered on their faces. Josephine sometimes offers him a sad smile when she catches him staring at the Inquisitor's door during the morning meal. 

She'll call you when she needs you.

He repeated the mantra like a prayer, whispering it to himself every night. For a time, it dulled the emptiness inside his chest, but with each passing day his faith chipped away. He severely underestimated how much he needed her.

Cullen’s fist hovers above the door now, hesitating.

“If you’re going to see her, at least bring her dinner,” a lilting voice nearby drifts towards him. He turns quickly, suddenly embarrassed of loitering outside of Alhari’s rooms.

Dorian’s smirk is half-hidden in shadow, but his eyes are full of what Cullen can only guess is resigned sadness. He’s holding a plate of cold food; the evening meal was hours earlier.

“How. . . how is she?” Cullen asks. He realizes how insignificant the question is, quickly adding, “I mean - “

“She’s struggling,” the mage responds, matter-of-fact. His gaze softens, drifting to the floor. “The Inquisitor and I saw first hand what fear is, truly. I haven't known her long, of course, but to see your friends turning into red lyrium, to watch them die - “

He shivers. Cullen feels the twinge of his worry deepen. 

Dorian leaves the statement hanging in the air, then levels Cullen with a small grin, a sad stare. "She wouldn't shut up about you," he says quietly. "Chattered on and on as we traveled back to Thedas. Just. . . remember that when you’re handing her a piece of cold turkey.”

Dorian gently presses the plate of food into his hand and gives Cullen another tired smirk before heading towards the library.

. . .

Cullen nudges the door open after his knocks go unanswered.

“Alhari?” he calls up the staircase. “Al?”

There's still no response and a flush of panic burns at Cullen’s cheeks. He hesitantly climbs the steps, feeling his heart pounding harshly against the inside of his chest. Perhaps she doesn't want to see him for a reason.

“Alhari?” he calls again, reaching the top of the stairs.

Her chambers are dim and for a moment Cullen wonders if she’s even here - but then the darkness shifts a bit and there she is, standing on her balcony with those pale eyes, like pinpricks in the dark.

Like falling stars on a black backdrop.

“I-I brought you some dinner,” he states, gesturing to the plate in his hand. She stands motionless near the doorway as he walks to her desk and sets the food down. 

He’s only a few feet away from her now and it takes everything in him to stop himself from rushing to her. She's paler now, having sat indoors for the better part of month. Her frame is less bulky, her face gaunt. The Trevelyan firestorm reduced to a flickering candle. He wonders if she's been eating - a flutter of worry turns over in his stomach. 

The mountain of questions that had piled in her absence are pushed backwards in his mind, stifled for the moment.

“It’s rather dark in here, isn’t it?” he says hastily, turning away from her to find a striker for the candles. He opens a few drawers, clumsily fumbling through quills and extra inkwells and parchment pieces. He finds the striker, lighting one or two candles on her desk. He can hear her light footsteps behind him, suddenly acutely aware of her movements towards him. 

A hesitant touch lands on his shoulder blade, then his throat hitches as her hands slide along his torso, pulling him close. 

The knot in Cullen’s stomach loosens. They’ve never actually hugged before.

He finds he rather likes her hands and the way her arms curl around him. He can feel her body pressed against his back and didn’t imagine it would feel this right, as if she could melt into him, as if she should melt into him.

He slides a hand on top of hers, warming her cold fingers with his own.

“I’m so sorry,” she mutters, her face buried between his shoulder blades. “Cullen, I should have seen you - should have called for you."

Her words are strained, her voice tight. "I couldn't face you - couldn't see - I’m so sorry.”

Something like a sob escapes her. And then she’s wracked with them, her whole body shaking and shivering, hands clutching onto him as if she’s trapped in a storm and might be blown away.

Cullen turns to face her and lets the strong and powerful and brilliant Inquisitor bawl into his chest. “It’s okay,” he murmurs to her, pulls her closer and whispers comfort into her hair. She’s choking on her own tears and snot, but he doesn’t stop, doesn't pull away.

“I’m right here,” he assures her, “You know me, Alhari - I’ll always be here.”

. . .

The experience in the Fade changed her.

Cullen doesn’t know how long he’s been holding her, but somehow they’ve slipped to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He can feel the legs of her desk digging into his spine but Alhari is settled in his lap, splayed against him with her fingers still clutching his cloak and he doesn't dare move. 

Her sobs have subsided for now and she tells him everything, every last detail she can remember from the pure terror she witnessed. Cassandra and Solas with their deadened red eyes. The uncertain fate of the Inquisition. Losing him.

She tells him about how Varric seemed after Hawke sacrificed themselves.

“I knew that I couldn’t lose you,” she says quietly, avoiding his gaze, looking anywhere but into his eyes. “I knew I couldn’t lose you. Like Varric lost Hawke.”

He lets the words wash over him.

She knows him - like he knows her.

He presses his lips against the crown of her head, inhales to fill his lungs with her. He swears he can feel a fraction of another Cullen’s grief, in another future, where Alhari never returned to him.

If he ever lost her, truly and completely lost her -

“Alhari,” he says, drawing her attention. She finally looks up at him, those pale eyes searing the inside of his chest.

He has the overwhelming urge to kiss her, to press her body flush against his, and proclaim to her over and over and over of how he would never stop searching for her, never stop fighting for her until his damn dying breath.

He clears his throat.

“I - I - uh - I wouldn’t give you up,” he states, his face flushing bright red and all the courage slipping from him. "You know I wouldn't." 

But then she almost laughs, smiling, brilliant and fierce. Her old self shines through, that wild, wonderful hurricane of barbaric beauty.

“I know, Pretty Boy,” she says. “I know.”

_ Ah, there you are. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Updated the timeline to something more accurate/appropriate :)


	7. Chapter 7

_Part Seven_

She gets to know herself again.

Alhari leaves her chambers for the first time in six weeks, her head a little higher and her armor a little looser.

She strolls through the gardens and courtyards, chatting with her soldiers and other personnel. She checks the supply lines, visits with Solas and Dorian, and peeks into the barn to speak to Blackwall. After that, she’s welcomed to the tavern with Bull and his chargers, Sera muttering about how much she _might_ have missed the big dumb Trevelyan-whatsits or _whatever_ -

Even Cole drifts in to give her a few sprigs of lavender.

“They make you feel better. They’re supposed to be good for healing,” he mumbles underneath that huge hat of his. “I don’t know if they work on injuries you can’t see, but - here.”

He presses the flowers into her hand and she laughs with tears in her eyes.

It feels like she spends her entire day. . . _returning._

“It’s like coming home,” she says to Cullen later, stealing a game of chess after countless rounds of sparring with Cassandra. He watches her concentrate now, a faint smile on his lips.

He witnessed the pair of warriors in the training grounds earlier, their broadswords clanging against one another in the dying sunlight. There was something in Alhari’s eyes when she went for the Nevarran again and again ( _and again_ , really though - does she ever tire?), something akin to amusement - as if she was reminding herself that yes, _this_ is what she was supposed to be doing.

She nudges him with her foot, reminding him now that it’s his turn. “Hurry up, will you?”

He throws a playful scowl at her, moving his chess piece thoughtfully. “This isn’t a game of _speed_ ,” he say, snatching up her Queen.

She rolls her eyes, a sharp grin starting at the corner of her mouth.

“What’s the use of being _slow_ when you know what you want?” she counters, cutting off his offense and knocking his own Queen over.

“You don’t have to rush into _everything_ , you know,” he responds, tapping a finger against his chin. She has him cornered, his poor King stuck in a space. Every move he could make would end in her victory.

Cullen sighs in resignation, tipping over his own King. A whoop escapes Alhari as she witnesses her win and after a moment, she shines a bright smile at him.

“You’re right,” she says, a bit sarcastically, her voice laced with double meaning. “Speed is _such_ a detriment when you know what you’re doing.”

. . .

Alhari _knows_ him.

He walks like a Templar and talks like a Templar but he isn’t _really_ a Templar (at least, not anymore).

He’s just... _Cullen._

Commander of the Inquisition Forces, Prettiest Asshat this side of the Frostbacks, Curly-haired soldier with a Straight Edge, and (honestly) the Worst Wicked Grace Player Ever.

But he’s also her friend. Some could argue her _best_ friend (most people would). 

He’s her rock, the steady ground underneath her feet as she struggles to resist getting swept into the growing chaos of the world. He’s the annoying but practical voice of reason when she flings out another strategy for the troops.

He reassures her in the smallest decisions.

He bolsters her confidence when she is unsure of herself.

He reminds her to breathe when the darkness of an alternate timeline reaches her. 

And - by the Fade - he makes sure to save a space for her at breakfast. 

He's (unfortunately or fortunately), the anchor that tethers the hurricane to the ground.

She glances up from the letter her sister has sent detailing how much her nephews have grown and watches Cullen mumbling to himself across the courtyard, as he moves chess pieces this way and that. He's playing an imaginary opponent, scratching his head and arguing with himself. 

He’d be a good father, she thinks.

An image of unruly and curly-haired toddlers forms in her mind, a laughing Cullen rushing after a herd of tumbling children.

She grins to herself.

Of course they’d have his hair.

She returns to her sister’s letter, smiling to herself.

They’d have her eyes, though.

. . .

“They wouldn’t have _your_ eyes.”

They’re allegedly patrolling the top part of the battlements, strolling alongside one another as the sun settles behind the nearby Frostbacks. But they've been really arguing about the imaginary flock of children they share.

Cullen scoffs at the idea of their babes having anything but _his_ eyes.

“They would have _your_ hair,” he says with certainty.

Alhari exaggerates a gasp, pressing her hand against her chest in feigned offense.

“They would _definitely_ have my eyes,” she says, refusing to budge on the subject. “Look at mine! They’re gorgeous!”

She pulls her left eye open with her fingers and he leans forward to gaze into it. Her breath catches and suddenly her palms are sweating - but then he shrugs. “I just don’t see them having terribly  _pale_ features. Look at mine! Warm, inviting, overall _better_."  

They’ve been arguing about this for the better part of an hour, debating whether or not their nonexistent brood would inherit her temper or his streak of loyalty. If they would have her hair or his. If they would be a bit rotund like she was when she was born, or a bit smaller than average like himself.

They’ve been stuck on the eyes for fifteen minutes.

“You’d _curse_ these fictitious children with _your_ eyes?” says Alhari now, half-laughing. She sighs, moving past him on the battlements.

“Next thing you know, you’d want them to have your nose.”

He pauses, brows furrowed, and she laughs a little harder at his expression. 

_“What’s wrong with my nose!?”_

. . .

She starts to dream of him.

It’s innocent enough at first.

He appears in the corner of her mind, a quick appearance swallowed by the rest of her nighttime trances, a hello-goodbye flash.

He drifts in and out of her subconscious, offering a surprisingly witty remark or a boring statement of fact every now and again. He whispers, laughs, grumble... all at the edge of a dreamy fog, his smile fading in and out of her mind's eye.

And slowly over a few days’ time, he inserts himself as a main pillar in her dreams, stuck to her side in all dreams and nightmares. 

Sometimes, he appears scowling - sometimes he is _laughing_ -

But every time she wakes, the fleeting moment of his arms resting against her stomach and the imagined drool of his on her pillow, is snapped away by the time her eyes creak open, as she hopes against hope he is truly there beside her.

(He never is). 

. . .

She knows she’s staring.

Alhari slouches further down in her seat, gazing at the man across the chess table. A fist supports her tilted head while her eyes narrow, studying his features.

He’s currently recounting the disastrous morning he’s had, after walking in on Dorian and Bull _again_ because neither seem to lock doors anymore, and his mouth is moving quickly, his lips forming words that don’t quite reach Alhari’s ears.

Uneven jaw. Uneven _scruff_.

Nose too narrow for his too-big head.

Ears slightly different sizes.

Fingers thick and callused from handling a sword all these years.

Soft golden eyes darting quickly from one thing to another, from chess piece to her hand, back to another chess piece, then finally off to the side as he exhales.

“Honestly, it’s every other day with those two,” he says, those golden eyes settling on her pale ones. The corner of his mouth twitches upward. “Are you even listening to me?”  

What would it be like to nip at that collarbone? Would he shudder? Would his breath hitch in his throat like hers would?

“Al?”

Alhari gulps, her mouth suddenly as dry as the Wastes, as she sits up rigidly in her chair. “W-What?”  

The thoughts are there and away in an instant, but Alhari can feel the heat of embarrassment crawling up her spine. She clears her throat, attempting to get rid of the sandpaper stuck there.

He’s studying her now, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “It’s your turn,” he says, gesturing back to the chess game, half-finished.

. . .

Alhari doesn’t know how she got here.

Well - that’s not exactly true.

She remembers getting out of bed in the middle of the night, rolling over her furs and into Cullen’s stolen cloak. She remembers grabbing an extra blanket from the trunk near the foot of her bed, just in case it was colder than she thought. She remembers nicking a few biscuits from the kitchen pantry on her way out the main doors, and she remembers taking a deep breath full of cold air when she emerged into the night.

She even remembers Cullen huffing and puffing heavily as he climbed the crumbling stairs to their shared secret space, his shimmering face breaking out into a smile when he saw she had already settled into their perch.

But she doesn’t know how she got _here_ \- laughing with her Commander (her friend), teeth stained purple from the alcohol sloshing about in the bottle Cullen still clasps.

“And _then_ ,” he goes on, “The poor recruit had to do the rest of the run in nothing but his smalls!”

Alhari chokes on another mouthful of spiced liquor before sputtering and collapsing completely into laughter. They chuckle together, staring up at the massive expanse of the heavens.

The pair fall into a comfortable silence, each lost in private thoughts.

Alhari sighs, noticing the warmth of him against her shoulder. She’s wrapped the extra blanket around them, the furs tickling her cheek. What would it be like, she wonders, to fall asleep next to this warmth every night?

“This is nice,” he mutters quietly. “Oh! Look, a shooting star.” He points in the direction of the second moon, where a star has left a streak of light behind, scalding the darkness of the night.

“When I was younger,” he continues, the soft bass of his voice vibrating through Alhari, “I used to tell my brother and sisters to close their eyes, and to make a wish.”

Alhari slides the bottle towards her, glancing up at the man with his eyes shut. He’s mumbling under his breath, something so low even she can’t make it out. His lips move quickly, as if reciting a well-known prayer. Her lungs seem devoid of air all of a sudden, her cheeks flush with heat.

He blinks, opening his eyes and settling his gaze on her face.

“What did you wish for?” she asks, attempting to be as nonchalant as possible. She even takes a tiny sip from the bottle, to distract herself.

He leans backwards onto his elbows, resting against her thigh.

He grins, as if sharing a private joke with himself. “It doesn’t come true if you say it out loud.”


	8. Chapter 8

_Part Eight_

Varric knows.

He knows _everything_ that floats in and out of Skyhold’s gossip mill (sometimes authoring a few rumors himself). He knows that Josephine still writes to a mysterious (ex-?) lover nicknamed Lavender. He knows Solas hides sweet rolls in his desk to nibble on during painting breaks.

He also knows of Dorian and Bull’s affair (but _everyone_ knows about that).

So - it comes as a surprise when Varric overhears a rumor he hasn't heard before. The three maids chittering about the sheets from the Inquisitor’s room quickly shuffle through the Great Hall.

“I’m _telling you,_ ” one of the maids - the oldest sister of the trio, Varric recognizes (Carina? Carminia? Yes, right, Carminia) - says, pulling the laundry basket onto her hip and trailing after the other two. The three disappear around a corner into a corridor and, curious as ever, Varric pauses before following.

“The _Inquisitor_?” one of the other sisters - Catrina, the youngest - whispers. “She’s very pretty but also . . . very scary.”

“We’ve been washing the woman’s sheets for how long now?” the middle sister - Carolina - responds, exasperated. “A year? A year and a half?”

“I’m _telling you_ ,” Carminia repeats as Carolina opens the door to the service quarters for them. “I know there has been a man in her bed, and it _has_ to be that Commander.”

Varric’s ears perk up from the statement and a laugh forms in his throat. The Commander! The Inquisitor! Oh, this is good.

_Alhari, you old war hound!_

Varric sneaks back up the hall to his table, strewn with edits of his latest manuscript.

“Hey, Varric!” says Alhari, passing by with a mouth full of apple.

“Hello, Inquisitor,” he responds with a chuckle. “Oh - I just saw the Commander; I think he was looking for you?”

She pauses, mid-step, and turns her head towards the dwarf. Taking another bite into her apple, she smirks. “Since when did you call the Commander, ‘ _The Commander_ ’?”

“Al _hari_ ,” Varric says, feigning shock. “I’ve always respected the title given to our curly-haired commanding officer.”

She steps closer, suspicious. “Have you? I can’t seem to remember a single time in which you _respectfully_ called Curls _‘The Commander’.”_

“I’ve always respected the titles and privacy of _all_ trusted Council members,” Varric responds, returning to editing his novel. "The Ambassador, the Spymaster,  _the Commander,_ etc., etc." 

She plucks the quill from his hand, sliding closer and shoving the half-edited parchment across the table.

“Varric. . ." she starts. "What do you know?”

. . .

“He thinks he _knows_.”

Alhari laughs again, throwing her head back and slapping her thigh. Her legs are kicked up onto Cullen’s desk while the Commander sifts through a few reports in his hands.

“Knows what?” he asks, half-listening. “Where is that - oh.”

He taps her feet and she lifts them, freeing the report he had been looking for earlier from underneath the mud-encrusted boots. He frowns at the dirt left on the parchment. "Clean your boots today," he mutters.

“He thinks we’re - you _know,_ ” she explains in a fierce whisper, winking. She slaps her hands together.

_“Fighting?”_

“No, you dullard,” she says with another laugh. “He thinks we’re _romantically involved_.”

Cullen blinks as if he has been blinded by the sun itself while his face and neck turn beet red.

“W-wh-what?”

“I _know_ ,” Alhari snorts. “How ridiculous, right?” 

She can't tell if she's trying to convince  _him_ or  _herself_.

(Herself.)

Cullen glances at her - her pale eyes glinting with giggles and that wide smile that only makes an appearance when they’re alone - and chokes on his own shock.

He coughs uncontrollably into the crook of his arm while she stands and crosses over to him.

“Are you alright?” she asks, a hand on his back. She pats him a few times and he waves her off.

“S-sorry,” he mutters, his coughing fit subsiding. “I just - erm - _ridiculous?_ “

She absentmindedly rubs his back, tapping her other fingers against her chin.

“Of course, if he writes a novel about us, we could probably cash in on that.”

. . .

He _knows_ it’s ridiculous.

It’s silly - foolish - crazy - irrational - completely _ludicrous_ , to be honest.

Cullen paces back and forth in his loft later that night, rubbing the back of his neck. She called it _ridiculous_ to be romantically involved with him and _obviously_ it is. He chuckles unconvincingly to an invisible audience.

It would never work in the long run, of course.

She’s _insane_. Part of bandit clan until she fell out of the sky. Chews with her mouth open most of the time. Brilliant fighter yes, but definitely _not_ for him. 

He stops, sighing heavily.

It’s a crush, he reasons, an infatuation - that’s all it is, all it ever was. He’s supposed to be helping save the _world_ for Maker’s sake, not to fall in love with an insane, barbaric woman who _happens_ to be stuck with the glowing key to saving aforementioned world.

It’s incredibly _ridiculous_ to keep going over his feelings for her, like ripping open almost-healed wounds and pouring a bucket of salt into them. And it’s _ridiculous_ to keep seeing her in his mind every time he closes his eyes.

“Ridiculous,” he mutters to himself now. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

. . .

Well, now, _everyone_ knows.

Alhari beats Cullen to the mid-morning meal, balancing two plates in her hand while she makes her way to their usual spot.

“Have you seen Curls?” she asks Dorian nearby, who is delicately slicing a croissant in half. She points to his plate. “That’s weird, by the way.”

“I have not and it is not,” the mage responds, popping a piece into his mouth. “Did you not see him this morning?”

“It _is_ morning,” she responds, turning to the full plate of biscuits in front of her.

“Oh my mistake, he leaves your chambers by sunrise, then?” Dorian laughs, cutting further into his croissant. Alhari kicks him in the shin underneath the table. “Ow - that hurt!”

“Grumble into your fancy bread, magic man,” Alhari sneers, ripping a biscuit in two with her hands.

She slides the plate full of eggs and bacon over to Cullen’s empty seat as the doors to the Great Hall open, the Commander himself quietly creeping into the room.

She waves him over and he practically rushes towards her, frantic. 

“Are you alright?"

"I feel like you ask me that every day," he responds with a nervous laugh.

She furrows her brows. "So, no?"

He laughs again and Alhari narrows her eyes. "No - I think I'm fine. Better than - erm - better than I have been lately." 

"Think?" she repeats. She shakes her head; _everyone today is weird._

"Alright, well. Jacques is making more bacon but - “

Before she can finish the statement about their cook and the shortage of meat, Cullen crushes his mouth against hers, nearly pushing her off the bench entirely. He catches her, a hand on the small of her back and he suddenly pulls away, exhaling in both relief and shock. 

Varric could write an entire short story on the collective gasp that ricochets throughout the Hall.

(He does, two weeks later).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you go, cullen! _(fiiiiiiinally)_


	9. Chapter 9

_Part Nine_

“So you _know_ you’re insane?”

Alhari pulled Cullen into her chambers after the mid-morning meal, where the two had sat side by side in absolute silence. The rest of the Inquisition had joined them in the stark quiet, scraping silverware the only sounds permeating the air.

And when the Inquisitor practically dragged her Commander by the ear into her rooms after the meal, the entire Hall erupted in fevered whispers and giggles.

“I - I don’t know what came over me,” whispers Cullen in return now, rubbing the back of his neck and pacing about the room. He feels deeply embarrassed - not for him, surprisingly, as he’s certain he would have exploded at some point if he couldn’t kiss her. He’s embarrassed for _her_ ; how stupid could he have been, busting into the Hall, in front of his troops and their followers?

He coughs, attempting to clear the tension. He hadn’t anticipated this reaction.

“Cullen!” she says, throwing her hands up in the air. “During _breakfast?_ ”

He puts his own hands up in defense. “I know, I’m - I’m sorry, Al,” he says quietly.

“You had to do that in front of _everyone?_ ” she responds, shoving him hard in the shoulder. She runs shaking fingers through her hair, her cheeks flushed with mortification. He _had_ to do it right then, didn’t he? Had to barge in on her peaceful biscuit breakfast? Had to walk on in and show her he could cross the line she herself couldn’t?

 _“You’re such a prat!”_ she shouts now, grabbing his arm to stop his insufferable pacing. “Stop!” she growls, pulling him over to her. “You’re running a groove into my floor.”

“ _I’m_ a prat?” he repeats, stumbling from her strong grasp.

“How would _you_ like it if I came up to you in the middle of the _training grounds_ in front of _all your soldiers_ and kissed _you!_ ” she says, poking him in the chest for emphasis.

He can’t help himself, a smile creeping onto his face.

He chuckles. “I’d rather like that, actually.”

Her cheeks are a bit pink, he notices, even though her eyes are still ablaze.

It’s her turn to cough.

“Until later, then?” he says, his head spinning from his own boldness. He gently pries her hand from his arm, savoring the feeling of her fingers against his, before turning to the door.  

Alhari stomps a boot into the floor behind him.

“Hey!” she snarls, seizing his shoulder and pulling him away from the exit and towards her. “I’m not finished with you!”

Her mouth crashes against his, all scraping teeth and heated need.

It’s as if something has dislodged from under his ribcage, a massively airy feeling filling his chest and lungs. He stands a bit taller, the room disappearing around them while he focuses on the sharp features of her face.

She kisses him the same way she argues - all passion and bite and dominance and snark. She kisses him like she needs him, as if he is a prize to be won, or victory is on the line - oh, _Maker_ -

_When did he get so dizzy?_

He almost collapses, his legs turning to puddles underneath him, but she catches him, her strong hands on his torso. His back rests on the door behind him as her breath smokes his face, soft and sweet against his cheek.

This can’t be real, can it? Can he really be this lucky or has he truly gone mad, thinking about this moment over and over in his head? She can’t truly be there, pressing her body against his, emanating an intoxicating heat that makes his head swim further and further into a fog - can she?

He wraps his arms around her, reassuring himself that this is real and not another imaginative scene.

 _She’s_ real.

“Are you passing out on me?” she mutters against his neck. She presses her lips to the soft flesh of his throat and his breath hitches (quietly she thinks, _knew it_ ).

“You're certainly not helping,” he whispers, gulping. He can feel her smile and she sighs.

“Well, would it be better if we lie down?”

. . .

It doesn’t take long until the whole of Thedas knows.

The consequences and aftermath of _the Event_ \- as everyone in Skyhold is deeming the very public, gasp-inducing, mouth-collision between the Inquisitor and the Commander - are shockingly minimal for the everyday operations of the Inquisition.

But to Josephine, it’s a public relations nightmare.

It’s the hottest gossip in both Orlais and Ferelden. Marriage proposals for both the Commander and the Inquisitor have tripled in volume (but so have the threats) in the six weeks since the news broke.

Bards have weaved falsities into their latest love songs, of the Inquisitor saving the Commander from a harrowing experience with a Pride Demon - or the Commander pulling the Inquisitor back from the brink of a Fade breach.

“You couldn’t have been a _bit_ more discreet, could you?” Josephine sighs, massaging her hand as it cramps up for the third time today. A pile of finished letters sits next to a pile of _unfinished_ letters, addressed to various noblemen and women scattered across Thedas.

Alhari snorts nearby, grasping Josephine’s hand roughly and digging her knuckles into the Ambassador’s soft flesh. Josephine’s fingers relax, but the rest of her is still taut as a pulled bowstring.

“It isn’t _my_ fault, Josie,” counters the Inquisitor, seating herself on Josephine’s desk and digging deeper into the palm of the Ambassador’s tired palm. “You should blame the blasted Commander for this whole disaster.”

Josephine is quiet, then breaks into a rueful smile.

“I was surprised it was him, honestly; thought it would be _you_ barging into the Great Hall to claim poor Cullen,” she says with a chuckle. “Lost five sovereigns to Leliana for that act of boldness.”

Alhari barks a laugh, throwing her head back and shaking the mane of her hair.

Josephine pulls her hand away, picking up a quill once more.

“I’ll finish these letters,” she announces to Alhari, shooing her off the desk. “And you go tell Cullen to finish _his_ letter.”

She sits in her chair, scooting it closer to the workspace. It’s a moment or two before she realizes Alhari has not budged.

“What letter?” the Inquisitor questions, crossing her arms tightly. Josephine smiles as best she can without bursting into laughter.

Alhari huffs, sprinting out from her office.

“I swear, no one tells me anything around here!”

. . .

He’s to let his family know.

That’s the directive Josephine has given him, thinking it wise that the news comes directly from Cullen and not from a bard full of half-truths.

And so, Cullen attempts to write his sister, Rosalie, because he knows that she’ll tell their other siblings almost immediately (let alone shout it from her rooftop to the entire village). He sits in his office, quill in hand, struggling to put his thoughts of Alhari to paper, but his stubborn fingers do not move.

There he sits, motionless.

Maker, how does he even _describe_ her?

Tapping his chin, he presses the quill tip into the parchment and scribbles -

_Dearest Rosie, I met a personified hurricane._

Hmm. . . too obvious. He scratches the line out before dipping his quill into the inkwell once again.

 _Dearest Rosie, I’m in love with the Inquisitor_.

Oh, Maker, even _worse_.

“What are you doing?” purrs Alhari, hopping in through Cullen’s window.

She strips her boots off as she approaches his desk, whipping the cloak from her shoulders and onto his. She drapes her arms around him, her warm body pressed against his back as he hastily throws an arm onto the paper, covering the words underneath. 

“You know the door is unlocked,” he mutters, crumpling the parchment.

“Ooooh,” Alhari says, attempting to pry him from the chair to get a better look.  “Is that the letter you’re writing to your family? How many poems did you write about me?”  

He catches her by the waist and plucks her from the floor as he stands, her muscled body dense and heavy. She counters by wrapping her strong legs around his hips, squeezing just enough to make him blush.

But then he’s back at her neck, landing a flurry of kisses along her throat and nipping her collarbone.

“That’s not _fair,_ ” she whines, trying to catch his mouth with hers.

“It’s actually a letter to _your_ family, about how they should thank me,” he says, ducking against her. “You’d destroy all of Thedas if I wasn’t here to reign you in.”

Alhari snorts in his face, a laugh bubbling up from her stomach as she unlatches her legs from him to settle onto the floor. She pulls him in slowly, tugging at his collar with a hum and he sighs, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments while his heart beats loudly in his ears.

Only to have Alhari slip from his grasp with surprising speed, sidestepping him and snatching the parchment off the desk.

“ _Wait -_ “ he says, blinking and breathless.

But she’s too quick, leaping easily onto the ladder and bracing herself with one hand on a high rung.

“Dearest Rosie, I’m in _love_?” she reads aloud as he scrambles for her. He grasps her bootless ankle. “I was kidding about the poems, Pretty Boy - “

He tugs at her leg and she slips from the ladder onto him in a fit of giggles, both of them tumbling to the floor.

“You’re so annoying,” he huffs, grasping the parchment and throwing it across the office.

She hums atop him, grinning down at this scowling face before bending to kiss him.

“You should to change it to: _'Dearest Rosie, the Inquisitor is in love with me.'”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends :) Sorry for being MIA~ please accept this fluffy chapter as my formal apology!!!!


	10. Chapter 10

_Part Ten_

Alhari knows she’s being _sappy,_ thank you very much.

She knows that leaning over every morning to peck Cullen’s sleeping cheek before rising with the dawn is overly sweet, but she does it anyway, sliding over onto his side and pressing her chapped lips to his roughened face. He mumbles something ambiguous in her tangled hair, pulling her close before she pries his hands from her skin and leaves on yet another mission into the wilds.

And she knows leaving him small trinkets gathered from her deployments around Thedas would make Sera vomit on the spot if that little elf knew about it, so she hides them in his drawers and chests, around the ramparts and in their secret hideaway.

Once, she even slipped a small flower into his hair while he oversaw the recruits’ training exercises and he didn’t notice for _hours_.

And Alhari knows that the habit of arguing with him during every war meeting will most likely never cease, but at least she can replace her biting words with _romantic_ ones when they’re alone later, shrouded in darkness and whispering underneath their shared sheets.

“Your tactics are too aggressive,” he says to her, continuing an argument from earlier. She adjusts the furs around them in the cold Inquisitor tower before smacking his stomach with a pillow.

“In more ways than one,” she replies, laughing as he tackles and pins her to the bed in retaliation.

And she _especially_ knows weaving her fingers with his while they patrol the ramparts is _so_ incredibly sappy, that it honestly would be the death of her if anyone ever found out how truly and deeply and _madly_ she’s in love with the infuriating, stubborn, stupidly handsome and amazing and caring _Commander_ -

She brings their entwined hands to her mouth, planting a soft kiss on the back of his hand. He smiles at her, his grin that pinches at the air in her lungs and makes her heart hop in surprise.

He leans over to kiss her and she allows herself to be devoured by the ever-encompassing presence of the Commander.

Sometimes, she loves him so much it hurts to breathe.

. . .

Cullen knows it’s around here _somewhere_.

He’s looked all around Skyhold for it - Alhari’s rooms, the Command posts, the Training Grounds, the War Room, and even the highest perch in the ramparts. He’s poured his few personal possessions out of their respective chests and shifted through piles and piles of papers that still litter his desk.

It isn’t underneath his bed, nor is it in any of the pockets of his clothes. A deep panic is beginning to settle in his stomach.

_Where did I leave it?_

Maker, Rosie would _kill_ him if she knew he’d lost it.

“‘Lost’ is a strong word,” Cullen says aloud to himself, pulling books from his office shelves and putting them onto the floor. Perhaps it had fallen behind the bookcase, crammed between the wall and wood.

He pulls the shelving forward, books and letters scattered around his feet. A scrutinous scan reveals - _nothing_.

“Oh, no.”

He gulps; it’s plain and well-made, a band of hammered gold and copper, with a tiny opal piece nestled between the metallic entwined hands - but it belonged to his mother and she had worn it with pride before she was lost to the Blight.

There is no way he could have lost it, not _that_ heirloom.

Cullen quells the panic rising in his throat by swallowing a few more times, then scrapes the melted wax off of his desk, hoping the band is lodged somewhere in one of the candle holders.

It isn’t.

Rosie will have his head on a _spike_.

Cullen dives to the floor, searching underneath his chair and in between the floorboards for the fourth time. He squints his eyes, hoping for the shiny opal to make itself known.

“Knock, knock,” Alhari suddenly sing-songs, kicking his door open with a boot so hard it bounces off of the wall. He jumps smacking the back of his head against the bottom of his desk, more from his startled nerves than her entrance.

_“Ow!”_

“Cullen?” Alhari’s face appears before his as Cullen rubs his sore head. “You’re pantsless.”

“Not the time for a joke,” he grumbles, sliding out from under his desk and straightening.

“Not a joke, this time, _actually_ ,” she responds, patting a pile of trousers she had set down nearby. “I really do have your pants.”

She places her hands in the pockets of a snatched pair of his pants. “Also, I’m _in_ your pants.” She laughs out loud at her own humor. “Get it?”   

He glances down at the clean clothes, folded neatly and fresh from the laundry, already forming an apology in his mouth -

And there it is.

The small leather pouch sits neatly atop the pile, darkened from oil Alhari no doubt had applied with care while oiling her leather armor.

He pulls the strings along the pouch, allowing it to open as he breathes a sigh of relief. The small ring falls into his palm, shining and expectant.

“Fancy,” says Alhari with one eyebrow arched. “Your mother’s?”

He studies it, clasping it between his index finger and thumb, the stone catching the light of the afternoon sun.

“No,” he says, surprisingly calm in the face of an idea forming in his head.

“Rosie’s?” guess Alhari next, stepping closer to squint at the jewel. “Oohhh, wait, is this a trick question? Is it really Branson’s?”

Cullen feels the chuckle in his chest before he covers her mouth with his.

He was right - she smells like leather oil (and lavender, and smoke, and something heady that he can’t quite place but makes his head spin nonetheless).

“It’s yours,” he says afterwards, sliding down to one knee. He presents the ring to her, just like his father told him he should when he finds that missing piece of himself.

(Although, Alhari is a _not_ a missing piece, she’s a whole damn ancient ruins’ _puzzle_.)

The Inquisitor is eyeing him with suspicion, narrowing her pale eyes.  

Then, she barks a laugh.

(His father didn’t warn him about when the woman you’re attempting to propose to, _laughs_ in your face.)

“And _I’m_ the sappy one,” she says, exasperated.

She slides down to the floor to join him, kissing his face all over.

. . .

Alhari knows when her sisters’ arrival is imminent.

Her skin prickles with anticipation, the same way it does when a cold front meets head to head with a warm front - and a raging storm is about to break.

“Stop pacing, you’re going to run a groove in the floor,” says Josie, shifting her cards from one hand to the other. Alhari pauses for a moment, but continues to pace until the Orlesian huffs. “Sit _down_ , Alhari.”

The Inquisitor bends to the will of the Ambassador, making a noise in her throat between a whine and a sigh, then heavily sitting down in one of the Tavern’s sturdy chairs.

“I can _feel_ the vibrations in my teeth,” the Spymaster to her left says, halting the shaking Inquisitor’s leg with a firm grip on the other woman’s knee.

“Who’s turn is it?” Alhari grumbles into her cards, the current game of Wicked Grace a thousand miles away from her attention.

Dorian and Bull exchange looks across the table, to whom Cullen attempts to mouth, “ _Keep calm._ ”

Alhari nips at her fingers, the skin and nails torn from the last few nerve-wracked days. She clears her throat, repeating a little louder, _“Who’s turn is it?”_

“I want to say it’s mine, but I’m also scared of what that actually entails,” says Cole quietly from the corner of the table.

Cullen glances down at his hand, one card of each suit sitting neatly in between his fingers.

Rubbish.

He exhales a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding. The tavern is warmer than usual, bodies packed in against the chill of oncoming winter winds and he hopes he’s sweating from the crowded room and not the anxiety that keeps popping up from the back of his mind. The smell of the fire nearby is tinged with spices, courtesy of Solas’ herbal kit and he takes another deep breath.

He blinks, intense déjà vu rushing in from the back of his mind. Wait - has he had this hand before?

Perhaps it’s the scent of the fire. Or the glint of Alhari’s eyes.

Or the familiar warmth of a tavern he used to inhabit, just like this one.

“Today, Curls,” says Varric now, whipping the Commander back to the present. Cullen blinks again, clearing his throat and mind of the almost-recollection.

“Yes, um - er - “

“You _do_ remember how to play, right?” the dwarf says with a chuckle, laughing into his ale while taking another sip.

How could Varric be so _collected_ and _calm_ with Trevelyans fast approaching in the distance?

Cullen imagines two masked riders barreling down the mountain roads towards Skyhold; he can’t quite envision their faces, or even if they’re older or younger than Alhari.

But then Varric is nudging the Commander again and Cullen shoots him a scowl, discarding a Dagger and slipping another card from the top of the deck.

Another Dagger.

 _Oh, Maker_.

. . .

Cullen knows he’s going to lose.

His cards are trash and Alhari has channeled her anxiety into ruthless Wicked Grace strategy. She discards and pulls cards with the same fluidity she has in battle, her near-translucent eyes darkened with concentration.

The rest of the tavern carries on over the boiling collective nervousness, a veneer of revelry coating the tension.

What will the Trevelyan siblings bring along with their arrival? The Trevelyan clan has a long history as minor nobles, Cullen knows, but the sheer existence of Alhari puts any expectation of genteel behavior into question.

And then there it is - the squeaking gates of Skyhold rolling upwards, the quiet rumble of horses galloping into the courtyard, the shouts and whoops from a pair of voices floating through the grounds to the Tavern.

Alhari nearly overturns the Wicked Grace card table as she sprints out the door with the abrupt force of a raging storm. A few chairs are knocked over by the sheer wind of her departure.

“If one hurricane is a hurricane, then what’s _three_ hurricanes combined?” questions Varric with a laugh.

Dorian stands, a sigh escaping him. “I would say the End of the World, but that seems to already be happening.”

Cassandra catches the Commander’s eye, an eyebrow arched. “Let us welcome the Inquisitor’s family,” she says after a moment. Clapping a hand on his shoulder, she pulls the man upright.

Cullen gulps, taking a deep breath before the pair step out into the crisp cool air of night.

It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust in the darkness, but for a moment Cullen isn’t sure if there are three Alharis wrestling with one another, or if he’s actually had too much to drink.

The trio of towering women are chattering in high-pitched voices, words and phrases pouring rapidly out of their mouths and interspersed with bouts of similar, cackling laughter. The three circle one another for a long minute before one slips Alhari into a headlock.

“Is it me, or was this a bit easier the last time we saw her, Kiva?” the woman says, grunting against the larger Alhari. The sides of her head are shaved in a similar fashion to the Inquisitor, but her scalp is encrusted with intricate tattoos and her features clad in dark trader garb. She laughs (eerily close to Alhari’s chuckle), “It’s as if I’m wrestling a _bear!_ ”

Alhari points an elbow at the slimmer woman’s stomach before slamming into her, escaping the headlock by sheer force.

“I believe you’re just weaker nowadays, Taraan,” the other sibling muses, dressed in fashionable Orlesian clothes and crossing her arms.

The first sister smirks, charging low to the ground and colliding with the Inquisitor's abdomen.

It’s as if Cullen is watching Alhari accost herself from an alternate timeline.

“You’re the worst,” the Inquisitor says now, picking up Taraan by the waist and hoisting her into the air. The smaller woman attempts to kick at Alhari’s head, but can’t quite get the right angle. 

Kiva laughs ( _also_ eerily close to Alhari’s). “Hari, put Raan down please, you’ll hurt your lower back lifting that heavy sack of potatoes.”

Taraan grumbles. “Hey!”

“Five sovereigns says one of their grandparents is a giant,” Sera says to Cullen with a snort, shoving an elbow into his ribs so hard he grunts.

“Or Qunari,” says Bull with a smirk, turning to the Commander. “If your kids turn out with horns, don’t look at me.”

He scowls at the pair before Cassandra nudges him forward to the swirling mass of Trevelyan siblings. The two women pause their attack on the third as he approaches and his palms intensify their sweating as he realizes that the newest Trevelyans in Skyhold are not only sisters, but _twins_.

“Er - hello - “

“And who is _this_ one?” the Orlesian starts, looking the Commander over.

“Your _loverboy_ , I presume, Hari?” the trader returns, now on the ground from where Alhari placed her.

“He’s a bit _scrawny_ for you, isn’t he? Oh, I miss your first lover, what was his name? He was huge!”

“Oh, don’t tell me he’s a _Templar_. Look at me - are you a Templar?”

“Of _course_ he’s a Templar, look at how he stands! Might as well have it branded on his _forehead.”_

Alhari unleashes a groan.

“You _both_ are the worst.”


	11. Chapter 11

_Part Eleven_

It’s not very long before the Trevelyan twins know something their dear, young sister does _not_.

They’ve met her beloved before.

It comes to light as the pair flit throughout Skyhold, controlled chaos whipping through the fortress.

One sister eavesdrops on the Spymaster while the other offers some unsolicited yet constructive criticism on Varric’s latest manuscript. One encourages Solas to share the poetry she found hidden in his private, _locked,_ desk drawer; while the other pours over letters the Ambassador is preparing for post, adding notes of her own in the margins.

By the end of their fourth day in the hold, Taraan and Kiva have etched out the near-impossible niche of being more disruptive than the Inquisitor herself.

But they’ve gathered enough knowledge to come to a very interesting discovery.

“Do you think she truly doesn’t remember?” asks Taraan now in their pseudo-Orlesian, hoisting Kiva up to join her on the roof of the Tavern. The older twin steadies herself against the brick chimney, enjoying the feeling of the sun’s rays dancing on her skin.

Warmth, apparently, is hard to come by in Skyhold. She doesn’t quite know how Hari lives in such cold climates.

“She either does not remember willingly or unwillingly,” Kiva finally responds as the pair lounge on the soft thatched roof. “My guess is that she simply doesn’t deem it _that_ important to remember.”

“She _was_ a bit of a young one back then,” ponders Taraan, tapping her chin with a long index finger. She shrugs before stretching out to warm her body, catlike and lean.

Kiva is quiet for a long while, peering downwards to the training grounds and sweeping her gaze to the tiny figure of the Commander, shouting inaudibly at his soldiers.

“Have you noticed how Hari has changed?” she whispers to Taraan, still in their Common-Orlesian mismatched language, staring at the angry little speck of a Commander.

“She’s . . . _gentler_ now.” Kive narrows her eyes, “As if a few of her edges have been rubbed smooth.”

The change in their young sister sits heavily in Kiva’s chest, a frustrated and concerned swirl of protectiveness in her heart.

Has the child changed for better or worse?

She remembers Alhari as a fresh-faced mercenary, a young girl in grown woman’s armor, barely able to swing a sword let alone travel by herself with the aggressive band of soldiers-for-hire. The cloud of fire and determination shrouded their sister like a protective cloak and when Kiva first allowed the child to escape their life of privilege and nobility, she knew Alhari would be fine - as long as she did not lose that fury of a hurricane, the truest mark of a Trevelyan, the thread that keeps the sisters connected.

Taraan peeks open an eye to gaze at her sister, raising a brow.

“She has always been like that, Kiv,” the younger twin says. She reaches out to touch Kiva’s knee, patting her reassuringly before sitting up to stare down at the Commander as well.

“Her edges have not been rubbed smooth,” Taraan continues. “She is a Trevelyan, a sharp and cutting blade.”

The Commander turns his head and catches the twins’ gaze from the roof of the Tavern. He raises a hand in greeting.

“Her blade has not dulled," she mulls quietly, tentative and untrusting fingers waving in return. "It's more like . . . her rust has been removed.”

. . .

The twins know the Commander.

At least, they knows him by proxy.

Taraan can remember the night the Trevelyan sisters made away with a garrison of Templars’ gold and remembers Alhari’s toothy smile as she wiped the table with each soldier who dared to sit down for a game of Wicked Grace.

The Commander was a pup back then, fresh out of formal training and bursting with good-natured law and order.

He was an easy target.

Taraan vividly remembers nodding to the cloaked Kiva near the pub’s bar before winking at the seated Alhari. The Templar recruit had been so _sure_ of himself, pulling the chair out forcefully before sitting down. it was almost laughable.

“He must have been only seventeen then,” whispers Kiva as the pair roam the halls, sharing her memory out of earshot of their young sister. “That would have made Hari - twenty? Twenty-one?”

“Still a pup herself,” Taraan agrees with a chuckle. “We all were, I suppose.”

She sighs. Their twenty-fifth year had been kind to them; they had seen Hari more back then.

But of course that was before Kiva had her hoard of sons and Taraan had her trading empire - before Hari joined up with the Cutthroats for the long-term.

Taraan lets her mind drift backwards to that night, the last evening the Treveylan sisters were a trio.

The curly-haired Templar had nearly slammed his fist into the table as Alhari toyed with him, but kept his composure as Taraan made easy work of the other Templars’ pockets. The troop had been so focused on the pair of players, they hadn’t noticed a slender hand nicking their coin purses.

Taraan smiles at the memory; they had been a bunch of irresponsible _idiots_.

The twins now fall into silence as they enter the Great Hall and gaze upwards to the massive ceilings. The throne Alhari sits upon to cast judgement is equally gargantuan, wolf heads carved into the sides of the Ferelden-styled seat.

She _would_ have a wolf throne.

It is hard to imagine their rambunctious sister sitting regally, her war council at attention behind her.

Taraan feels suddenly small, only the second time in her life she has felt tiny compared to her surroundings. The weight of their sister’s accomplishments settles heavily on her shoulders and the blooming sense of pride expands in her ribcage.

“Her accomplishments will carry forth changes for an entire generation,” she says to Kiva now, nudging the older twin in the side as the pair admire the throne. “Perhaps more. She has come a long way.”

The pair sport matching grins, faint smiles that they’ll never share with the so-called Herald of Andraste. Wouldn't want their baby sister to get a big head, after all.

“Don’t even think about stealing it, it’s too heavy for you two,” a voice floats towards them, heavy boots thudding down the hall to join the pair.

Taraan catches Alhari mid-pounce, tumbling to the floor in a flurry of armor and cloaks.

“Us? Thievery? _Never_ ,” says Taraan with a laugh, pushing Alhari’s arm behind her back.

The older twin ruffles Alhari’s hair, the sisters’ chuckles echoing off of the grand stone walls.

. . .

She _needs_ to know what they’re scheming about.

The twins are forged from the same Trevelyan ore as she, smelted from the same Trevelyan ingot. She _knows_ they’re up to something, the same way she knew they were approaching Skyhold - it’s the electricity in the air, the clouds darkening with energy.

And, of course, they’ve been whispering in their so-called “secret” half-Orlesian _half-gibberish_ language since they arrived six days ago.

 _Plotting_ , no doubt.

Alhari watches from her perch now as the twins mutter to one another, their heads bowed and close as they walk through the courtyard gardens. From her vantage point directly above them, she can catch a few Orlesian words coupled with a broken phrases of nonsense.

She follows them carefully, watching her footing on the disastrous and crumbling archway, knowing the pair’s intuition for spying is as sharp as the daggers hidden in their cloaks.

Mostly, they talk of the latest prank they’re planning for Dorian (a frog in his morning wine is a bit much), but Alhari’s ears perk when they change the subject - _Templar_.

She trips over a crag in the wall’s rim, concentrating too hard on the conversation below, but catches herself before she can fall completely onto her face.

Kiva twitches, her head swiveling and turning towards the ramparts with the speed of a frightened halla.

Alhari drops, presses her body against the stone and laying face down - she couldn’t have seen her, could she?

_Shit._

“. . . perhaps during a game of Wicked Grace,” she hears Taraan say as the twin doubles back to her sister. “Wouldn’t that be poetic!”

A pause; Alhari inhales a pebble and stifles the urge to cough it up. She can feel Kiva’s pale eyes, the ones that match Alhari’s, scanning the tops of the ramparts for any shift in movement.

“Kiv? Are you even listening to me?”

_Wicked Grace. Templar._

Alhari swallows the pebble with a painful gulp.

“Yes, yes, card games and the like,” she hears Kiva return. Their light footsteps resume and Alhari picks her head up a bit to peek over the side, watching their retreating figures.

She laughs at the audacity of her sisters before scrambling down the wall and onto the ground.

Of _course_ they’d attempt to cheat Cullen at Wicked Grace. How could they not? Cheating Templars out of their coin purses had been a favorite past time of the Trevelyan sisters, back when Alhari wasn’t battling a mortal on a bloody quest for godhood and her only concern was where to lay her bedroll.

“Those little - “

“Who?” says Cullen now, heading down a hill towards her. Alhari’s razor sharp smile makes an appearance; he winces.

“Oh, Maker no - what are you up to now?”

She grasps his hand, warm in her own, and pulls him towards the Great Hall.

“ _We're_  going to make you the best Wicked Grace player of _all time,_ ” she announces, dragging him through the Hall and into her tower.

Cullen tries to hide the pained expression on his face, but the grimace remains.

The Trevelyan clan will absolutely be the death of him.

. . .

Oh, no.

He’s met her before.

He knows _exactly_ where, and when, and how - Cullen has _most_ _definitely_ crossed paths with the Herald of Andraste, the Inquisitor, the Trevelyan Hurricane, his soon to be _wife_.

She is seated across from him on the floor of her chambers, her long legs crossed and her hands clutching a few playing cards.

Alhari had pulled him into the Inquisitor’s tower after the midday meal, a rushed explanation of her sisters’ latest prank pouring out of her mouth.

“They’re planning to rob you _blind_ ,” she whispered before finding an extra stack of cards in her disorganized desk. “But they’re going to be in for a very shocking surprise when they find you’re the _best_ Wicked Grace player this side of the Frostbacks.”

Cullen raised his brow, allowing Alhari to push him down into a sitting pouf. “I highly doubt we’ll be able to do that in a single night.”

She lit a candle, whipping the match in her hand to extinguish it. “Oh, you know what I can do in a night’s work.”

That had been three hours ago and their latest faux game of Wicked Grace had been going since the sun had set.

The sudden rush of the past threatens to topple Cullen to the marbled floor. He blinks several times, a memory overlaying his current reality.

Her sharp features lit by soft candlelight, half her face in shadow -

“Oh, Maker,” he breathes aloud now, before the wind is knocked completely from him by a swarming mass of déjà vu.

The smoke-filled tavern. That pale gaze. The pair of bandits who look _suspiciously_ like one another.

_His coin purse!_

“Four pair, stacked,” Alhari says now.

Cullen hears her, but it is as if he is underwater, drowned and choked by a past version of her. Years ago, she and her sisters had systematically robbed his entire platoon in one evening, in one, single game of Wicked Grace.

He is stunned, accosted by the memory of the young Inquisitor.

Yet, back then she _hadn’t_ been the Inquisitor - she had been a playful bandit, a younger, more violent version of her current self. He remembers that scar on her lip that he’s kissed a thousand times since then, the fake eyepatch she had donned that night to disguise her icy eyes, the pale gaze he wakes to every morning now.  

She was as tall and intimidating as she is now, but there had been something in her that frightened him back then, something hungry and savage.

He blinks, the real Alhari coming back into his focus.

She lays the cards down on the floor between them and Cullen’s heart begins to ache.

Fifteen years - he had met the woman who would capture his entire heart _fifteen years earlier_ , before the darkness and decay and destruction. When the world had seemed so full and vast, endless and overwhelming.

He had met her all those seasons ago; who would have known that they would be sitting here now, the Templar and the Bandit?

“Cullen?” she questions, nudging him with her knee. “Hello? Any torches lit in there?”

Fate, it seems, has a dark sense of humor.

“We’ve met before,” he manages, gulping with the words.

“Yes, we have,” she responds with a light laugh, glancing down at the cards. “Cullen, did you know we’re also _betrothed?”_ She chortles. “A scandal!”

He shakes his head, tossing down his own cards into the mess.

“No - wait - a tavern in Kirkwall maybe, it had been a game of Wicked Grace - “

Her eyes are wide, her mouth stretching into a grin as a realization clicks in her mind. She points at him: “Ha! _Wait!_ No _way!_ ”

“Alhari, I think you - “

“Did . . . did I _rob you?_ ” she asks with a cackle. She gasps, tears in her mirthful eyes. “Oh my _-_ by Andraste, _I robbed you!_ ”

She howls with laughter, shrieking and snorting, before toppling over onto her side.

He can’t help it, a grin spreading across his own face. “Alhari, this is _serious_.”

“Is it?” she chokes between giggles, literal tears falling onto her cheeks. “Cullen - I - _can’t - breathe!_ ”

“Al _hari_ ,” he says, shoving her leg a gently and scattering the cards across the floor. “What would happen if _Josephine_ found out? If all of Orlais found out?”

The Inquisitor is squirming in a hysterical fit, attempting to gasp for air as she convulses.

“Al, come _on,_ ” Cullen says, finally standing over her and pulling her upright.

“Cullen - _Curls_ \- look at me,” she says, finally calming herself. She clears her throat, wiping the tears from her eyes. She burns him with her gaze, intense and so full of warmth that he glimpses the inferno within her. The Inquisitor allows him to pull her to her feet, her hands resting naturally on his back in an embrace. Her breath whispers across his face, half-laughter and half-sigh. “Who cares?”

He kisses her then, pressing himself completely flush with her - and he can’t help but chuckle into her mouth.

“Hmm,” he says thoughtfully in return, pulling away as he feels her light fingers unhooking the coin purse on his belt.

He grasps her thieving, bandit hand and hums into her lovely, strong chest.

“Oh, Maker - we’ll have to tell our poor _children_ how we met.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! : ( 
> 
> Thanks for all your kind & encouraging & lovely words you equally lovely humans! Thank you again for reading through and sticking all the way to the end with me. I'd love to see more Warrior Inquisitor/Cullen out there in the world so definitely link me your fav fics! :) <3 <3 <3


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